APHA Supports Living Walls Program To Save African Lions

APHA (African Professional Hunters Association) has joined the fight to save African lions by supporting the Living Walls Program. You know we have been covering the critical status of African lions and the possibility that we will lose our ability to continue hunting them. John J. Jackson, III, of Conservation Force continues to spearhead an effort to avoid the lion's uplisting to Appendix I of CITES. And other organizations, including SCI, are supporting various programs to save lion. Well, the African Professional Hunters Association has joined with a group called The African People & Wildlife Fund (APW) to promote and support an on-the-ground program that will help reduce some of the lion-human conflicts that are contributing to the plight of this species. The program is called Living Walls, and involves planting thorny Commiphora africana trees around the bomas of village heardsmen to discourage nighttime lion attacks on livestock. The APW claims a 100 percent success rate with this project. How does this help lions? It eliminates the killing of lions in retaliation for the killing of livestock. APW's research in one region along the Tarangire National Park found that 6.4 to 8.8 percent of the lion population was being killed every year by villagers defending their livestock. The cost to enclose a homesteader's boma with these planted trees is only $500. You can read more about it from the African Professional Hunters Association, which recently created the African PHA Foundation to support charitable efforts like this one.

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